Carried Away
by FantasiaWandering
Summary: Far from home, setting up a new Embassy, Frisk discovers an ancient secret about the world above that makes their role as Ambassador a hundred times bigger, threatening to carry them away. Takes place about a year after Mistletoe.


It's quiet when you wake.

You lie listening to the dark, your brow furrowing as you try to figure out what's different about this silence. There's something quietly expectant to it. Like it's waiting for you.

Gently, you ease back the covers and slip free of your bed, and the shock of the icy floor against the bare soles of your feet sends a thrill chasing through you. Quickly, you jam your feet into your slippers as the floating hem of your nightdress settles around your ankles. The nightdress is new - you're growing so fast that nothing seems to fit anymore, and Undyne and Alphys had to scramble to find you something to wear at your last sleepover after your tore your pyjamas. Given the floaty fabric, trailing ribbons, and the yards of sparkly trim, you're almost certain that it's cosplay of something you haven't seen yet, but you love it anyway, even if the short layers of fabric that drift from glittering clasps on your shoulders in lieu of sleeves aren't at all practical for the weather.

There are guards sleeping in the rooms between you and the stairs, so you move carefully, not wanting to wake them. It's been an intensive few days setting up the newest Embassy, and they could use their rest. Besides, there isn't much that you fear in this house that's been given to you to use up in the hills outside the city. There isn't much you fear in general outside your own head, at that, but monsters have generally regained control of the forests of the world, and they hold no threat for you.

As you ease the door back, you realize what's odd about the silence, and your breath wreathes in clouds around you as you step into the cold. Turning your face skyward, you gaze up at the flakes tumbling in their dizzying dance through the moonlight. They leave tiny pinpricks of cold as they land on your upturned cheeks, but you don't really feel it, too caught up in the spectacle of it all. You have snow at home, but it's rarely as deep or as thick as this, and it always seems to fall when you're sleeping. This - it's like walking through a fall of stars. The snow wraps the little house in the woods like a thick blanket, muffling all sound until the crunch of your slippers against it echoes like thunder in your ears.

You take another step. There's a kind of music in the shifting of the snow beneath your soles. Your next steps slides, and you catch yourself on the turn, and suddenly you can hear the melody beneath the silence. A soft, secret smile drifts across your face as your arms sweep a path through the tumbling snow, and you pirouette again, and again, until you come to a halt at the edge of the clearing.

The shadows beneath the trees shift and shimmer, and part as a familiar head pushes free of them.

They've grown since the last time you saw them. Or perhaps it's just that they're not bowed by the weight of decorations dangling from their tree-topped antlers. Your hand drifts up to your waist, but of course you have no gift to offer the Gyftrot. You brought nothing with you when you left the house. Instead, you sweep down into a deep curtsey, and the sparkling cloud of your nightdress spills around you like snowdrifts in the moonlight.

The Gyftrot snorts in amusement, but makes no further effort to disturb the hush over the forest. Instead, it turns, wheeling on its hind hooves, and the look it casts back at you sings to something deep within your heart. You surge to your feet, momentum carrying you high enough that only a tip of your slipper brushes against its back as you leap. Arms spread. Head high. Wrists locked. Delicate hands. Allez.

The Gyftrot is there as you land, dainty hooves kicking faint sprays of snow as you bourrée. The flakes glitter as they fall, but as the snow settles, you realize that half of them aren't snowflakes at all. Tiny, shimmering monsters swirl around you, teasing the hem of your nightdress as you pivot with them, weaving around the Gyftrot. When it leaps to a boulder high on an embankment, you are ready, extending your leg in the jeté almost without thinking. Your foot barely brushes the rock before you're off again, chasing the Gyftrot through the frosted trees as your tiny companions keep pace and light the way.

It ought to hurt. These are ordinary slippers, not your dancing shoes, and even those can't be worn without a price. But it doesn't. Whether you're too cold or just too far past caring, you don't know, and it doesn't matter now. The pressure in your heart as you dip and weave between the Gyftrot's steps is too big, too important to let go of. You need this. You just had no idea how much you needed it.

The forest is unfamiliar, half a world away from Newest Home, but these gnarled trees in this ice-covered land share a kinship with the towering redwoods back home. They, too, share an ancient anchor to the frozen ground beneath you, and they, too, hold their secrets.

Those secrets flow forth as you pass, the bold gathering courage to join in the dance. It's not just you and the Gyftrot and the lights any longer. Dozens of ghostly figures drift from the trees, some as bony and corporeal as your friend, some so faint that they vanish when you attempt to look directly on them. You can feel, too, that not all the watchers in the woods have left the shadows to join you. The weight of many gazes settles upon you, one of which feels particularly familiar, and your smile grows as your movements shift into wordless invitation. They can join you or not as they choose, but they will always find a welcome in your dance. Laughing, your pace quickens as the Gyftrot leads you deeper. You can barely feel your feet any longer, but you can't stop dancing, and you don't want to. There is something building within you, that silent music sweeping to a crescendo; failing to see it through to its end is unthinkable.

But then, as you come to a clearing much larger than the one in which the little house sat, you freeze.

There is a weight to the air here, and the snowflakes slow as they tumble, until they hang almost motionless around you. The Gyftrot waits a few respectful paces back with the others, all of them gathering behind you and adding their silence to the hush.

The monster that steps from the trees steals the breath from you, and the sharp prick of tears stings at your eyes. As the creature steps forward, shining hooves ringing against the frozen ground, the bones of the earth beneath you tremble in answer, and as he raises his head skyward, the hundred points of his shining white antlers catch the moon and hold its light between them. As he turns to look at you, moonlight sweeps around you in a frozen tide, bright enough that you are certain those looking upon you can see your bones shining through your skin. There is no question in you that the gaze he turns upon you is searching for something deep inside you, but when you look back at him, all you can see are the stars in his ancient eyes.

Slowly, you sink into the deep curtsey your mother taught you. The one reserved for fellow royalty. After a long, frozen moment, he bows his head in return, and there's a shift in the world around you, as though the trees at your back and the earth beneath you have heaved a long, shuddering sigh.

The strength of it bears you to your feet, tiny monsters swirling in your wake as you surge toward him, and he lowers his antlers to meet you. Somewhere beneath the tide of emotion and the soundless music, there's a thread of fear, a sharp tug beneath your breastbone, but you're too caught up to take heed.

His lowered head sweeps toward you as you leap, and though his antlers are as forked and branched as any tree, their points gleaming against the ice and the snow, you're not afraid. This is an old dance, older than anything you've known, its steps worn into the fabric of reality itself. His antlers catch you, each of your limbs cradled in a different fork, and when he tosses his head, he sends you aloft. You reach up, for a moment sure that the moon is close enough to touch, and as you hang against the sky, you only now realize that the snow has stopped. A field of stars stretches above you, and as your fingers seem to brush against it, rivers of colour erupt above you, streaking across the sky in every direction. You're falling now, but you can't tear your eyes away from that dance of colours. You've seen it before, but not like this. Never like this. This is part of something you're only just beginning to understand, and your tears leave hot trails against your chilled skin as you fall.

He catches you in his antlers, your body reacting without thinking as you slip free and spiral back into the dance, but you don't go far. One arm is still caught, cradled gently between a fork in the opalescent antlers. Raising a shining hoof, he looks at you, testing, challenging. You know that your smile is just a little too raw, a little too wild, as you rise to your toes in answer, but it's what he was waiting for. He begins to move, slowly at first, but picking up speed, drawing you with him along the frozen river.

Somewhere along the way, your arm comes loose as you run, but you're drawn along all the same, for with each step, silver shapes melt out of the forest to join you on the ice, their silver hooves and gleaming antlers speaking to the connection between them, and the Gyftrot, and this ancient creature at the head of the shining tide. Your feet skid once or twice on the slick surface, but you catch yourself, and the bodies around keep you from tumbling to the ice. Your eyes are still wet with tears, your vision blurring, for with each step, you can feel something deep beneath you, something raw, and torn, and aching. The pain is as old as the moon, as old as the creature who leads you, but with each step, you can feel the rift knitting closed, and you weep for the land that has had no voice until now.

Perhaps it is the tears that distract you, but only now do you realize why the song of the hooves around you has changed. The forest is dropping away quickly, and ahead of you, the ice abruptly ends, plunging over the edge of a frozen waterfall. You can see the shards far below, jutting up in frozen spires, but there's nothing you can do. Your slippers have no traction on the ice, and the monsters around you aren't slowing, caught up in the same silent music that had you under its spell.

You're going to fall.

\- tumbling, plunging through the darkness and it's cold and it hurts and the wind screaming in your ears or maybe it's just you and then far below there is gold and you plummet toward it as the flowers turn their faces to the sky-

Your breath leaves you in a rush as a tide of raw, wild magic swirls around you and jerks you to a halt on the edge of the precipice. The herd thunders on, oblivious, their hooves ringing against the frozen waterfall as they leap their way down the spires. As flickers of blue fade from your skin, the silent song fades with it, magic and music loosening their hold on you until you're fully yourself again.

One member of the herd lingers behind the others. You turn to the Gyftrot standing at your shoulder, and offer your hand. Their breath smells of pine and peppermint as they sigh, nuzzling that strange, twisted mouth against your palm in quiet apology. Then, they turn and follows the others, their hooves ringing like bells against the ice, and the last of them is gone, a part of something you cannot know as they go where you cannot follow.

On the shining edge of the waterfall, you sink to your knees, finally feeling the cold.

Moments later, a heavy softness falls around your shoulders, and a bony hand yanks a fur-lined hood up over your face. It smells of ice, and darkness, and the space between worlds… and hot dogs. Laughing, you raise a hand to shove the hood up high enough to uncover your eyes, and you're met by a familiar grin, brilliant against the dark of the night sky.

"Thank you," you tell him, and you both know you're not just speaking about the coat.

The lights of his eyes are lost in shadow as he looks down on you, though the unsettling effect is mitigated more than a little by the fact that he's wearing the "cutie pie" sweater Toriel knitted for him.

" **nice night for a walk?** "

The words are light, but your cheeks heat anyway, and you duck your head, suddenly embarrassed. You made the choice to sneak out, and nearly ended up going over a cliff as a result. Even though you made your way through an underground kingdom and stopped the end of the world when you were far younger than this, things like this always seem to happen when you're trying to be independent in the human world. Shivering, you shrug your arms into the sleeves of the blue coat. Somehow, no matter how much taller you get than Sans, it's always far too big for you.

"Guess this plan didn't have a lot of traction," you say.

He snorts. " **you were getting a little carried away there,** " he says, and rests his hand against your shoulder.

At his touch, the stinging pain in your feet fades to a dull ache, and the bone-deep shivering eases its hold on you. Your hand drifts up to cover his as the herd slips over the horizon far below. For an instant, the stag pauses, and turns his head back toward you. As distant as he is, you swear that his antlers still catch the moon. Then he turns and follows the others, and the aurora fades with him, leaving only the vast expanse of stars overhead.

"He's ancient," you say quietly, finally giving voice to the huge pressure that's been building behind your breastbone. "This land… It's known him for a long time."

Longer than the human civilizations at the edges of the frozen expanse. Longer than the Barrier. And if he managed to escape the push underground that trapped Asgore and Toriel and everyone you love, there are bound to be others hiding in the world, ancient and afraid.

"... **i know.** " Sans' hand slips from your shoulder back into his pocket, and there's a heavy understanding in the way he drops down next to you.

"He's been alone so long…" you breathe, your mind only beginning to come to terms with the scale of it.

" **i know,** " Sans says again, those two simple words ringing with something raw and broken.

You turn to him in dismay, but before you can say anything, he reaches for you. His bony fingers are incongruously warm against your cheek as he wipes the frozen tears from your skin, and you gasp softly as a flash of half-forgotten memory tugs at the edges of your mind. A voice that sounds like yours crying in the dark. "No. I can't leave you all alone." The memory is gone as soon as it came, something deep and blue wrapping it gently and dragging it back into the abyss. So you don't know why your first response is to reach out and wrap your arms around Sans. But when, after a startled moment, he hugs you tightly in return, you know it was the right one.

All of your family knows to some extent what happened to you before you Fell, and all of them are free with their physical affection as a result, but Sans has always been the most reserved. He's perfectly happy to let someone, usually you, or Papyrus, or Toriel, cling to him or haul him around, but it's rarer for him to reciprocate; his hands usually stay in his pockets. At first, you thought it was just because of your inexplicable tendency to flinch whenever he pulled his left hand free, but he's like that with everyone. Which makes moments like this, when he's clinging to you just as hard as you are to him, all the more important.

There are stories that you've overheard as you've been working to set up the Embassy here. Cautionary tales to frighten children, warning them to stay out of the woods. Such stories exist all over the world. You've dismissed them until now as nothing but tall tales, but you can't dismiss the feeling that rocks you as the wound in the earth beneath you eases closed. The land broke when that ancient creature was cut off from the rest of its kind, its trust in humans severed. What you've done here tonight created a bridge, and the land is using it to heal.

But the world is a very big place…

You shift to bury your face against Sans' shoulder, your fingers digging into the knit of his sweater. In response, one of his hands moves to stroke your head through the hood, and the familiar gesture soothes some of the sudden, crippling fear that has taken root in you.

" **talk to me, kid,** " he says. There's concern in his voice, and iron as he reminds you of the promise you made to him, but he keeps it gentle. He knows you well enough by now to know that sometimes you have trouble putting words to the tangled feelings inside of you, and he has the patience to wait it out.

"I think I know what I'm supposed to do, now," you say, your voice muffled a bit by his sweater. Taking a shaking breath, you tell him everything, stumbling over the words as you try to articulate the feelings that came over you as you danced. He says nothing, just listens, his hand continuing to move over your hood as you speak. You hate how leaden and dull your words sound as they fall into the silence, in such sharp contrast to the song that still resonates in your heart, even though you can no longer hear it. And you confess your suspicions about the other stories whispered all over the world, warning children about monsters in the dark.

His breath catches at that, his hands stilling, and you cling even tighter to him. So many monsters lost hope before you Fell, and though Sans clung stubbornly to the last of his, you know how much of a burden it was for him, alone amongst the monsters underground in knowing just how long the wait to bring the Barrier down truly was. For him to know, even to suspect, that while he and his kind had faded, trapped behind the Barrier, other monsters still roamed free in the world… Tears sting at your eyes again, but this time, they're not for you.

He knows. He always does. His hand stops moving, and he hugs you closer. Sometimes he has as much trouble voicing the big feelings as you do, but there's gratitude in the way he holds you, giving strength and support as much as he's taking it from you. It steadies you enough that you can take another deep breath, and find your words again.

"I know what I'm supposed to do," you say again. "But it's so big… I'm scared, Sans. Tonight was… I almost got lost in it, and there are so many others out there, and what if one human can't heal it all, and I don't want to let anyone down-"

" **hey there,** " he says, easing back so that he can take your shoulders in his hands. " **let me derail that runaway train of thought for a sec.** " You smile at that, and his grin brightens in answer. Getting a reaction to his puns, for good or for ill, always cheers him up. " **one, monsters aren't humans. as long as you try your best, you're never gonna let anyone down. two, you'll handle it the way you handle everything else that gets thrown at you - one step at a time. and three, you're not gonna get lost, 'cause you're never gonna be alone, and nobody in this crazy family you built is about let you get carried away. got it?** "

Remembered sensation tingles across your skin, the flare of blue fire yanking you back from the precipice. You're not sure how long he'd been watching, but you can imagine how scared you would have been in his place. Blushing, you bow your head, but he just laughs and lowers his own until his brow rests against your hair.

"Sorry," you whisper.

" **don't be. you're allowed to have fun, kiddo.** "

"Just don't get carried away?"

" **you got it.** "

Letting out a long breath, you close your eyes, loosening your grip on his sweater. It's probably for the best that he followed you. Even if you had somehow been able to make it down the waterfall in one piece, every step would have made it harder and harder to pull away from the herd. And though you don't see Sans angry very often, you know with absolute certainty that no matter their intention, anyone who tries to take you away from your family is in for a very bad time.

But even still, you can't help but feel a sharp pang of regret at the thought. Being part of something so much bigger than yourself had felt so good, so right , and when you open your eyes again and turn to look out at the frozen expanse, you're filled with a strange, sad longing.

"I don't know about you," you say, "but I'm chilled to the bone. Time to go home?"

He laughs, but there's something calculating in his eyes as he watches you. " **yeah. one thing first, though.** "

Between one blink and the next, he's gone.

You draw the coat more securely around you as you rise to your feet, casting for signs of him in the shadows as the cold begins to seep in again, but where moments ago the forest was teeming with hidden life, now there is only emptiness between the branches, all its denizens gone in pursuit of the herd.

"Sans?" you whisper into the dark.

In return, you feel a faint tug beneath your breastbone.

Your heart quickens as the threads of suspicion hook into you, and you creep very slowly toward the glittering edge of the waterfall. There, impossibly far below, is a speck against the ice that wasn't there before. No sooner does the thought cross your mind than your soul pulls free, and your sharp gasp echoes across the ice. Slowly, a tingle spreads across your skin, and you watch as the crimson light of your soul turns a deep, dreamless blue. As it does, you feel a grin spreading across your face to match, until you're smiling so hard that your frozen cheeks ache from it.

Gingerly, you pick your way step by careful step away from the edge, your slippers skidding against the ice, until you can't see that distant speck any more. Your heart pounds like the hooves of the herd against your ribs, and you can't wait any longer. One, two steps is all it takes, and you're gliding so fast that the wind yanks the hood from your hair, both streaming out behind you as you slide across the ice.

Blue light flares as you reach the edge, and the night embraces your laughter as you fling yourself over into the moonlight.


End file.
